Ossoff, Collins kick off Georgia’s U.S. Senate race with attack ads

Wednesday morning, Ossoff’s team posted a two-minute video challenging Collins’ persona as a self-made man. Ossoff also reminded voters that Collins has President Donald Trump’s endorsement and has promised to back his policies if elected to the Senate.

“His rich daddy, a former congressman and career politician himself, handed Mike the keys to a company with dozens of employees, making multimillionaire Mike richer while real truckers did the actual work,” the narrator says. “Maybe that’s why Trump likes him so much.”

Hours later, Collins’ campaign posted a video going after Ossoff, a Democrat whose election helped give his party the Senate majority the same year President Joe Biden took office.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

“Ossoff voted with Biden 98% of the time,” the ad says. “The deciding vote for Biden’s inflation disaster. Higher taxes on gas and groceries. Crazy far-left bills to let men compete in girl sports. No wonder California crazies gave him three times as much money as the entire state of Georgia.”

Representatives for both campaigns said the opponent is bending the truth.

Ossoff has said Collins inherited his trucking business from his father, but the truth is more nuanced. Collins started his own company and, years later, bought his father out as the business continued to expand.

Collins does hold the same seat in Congress his father once did. But far from campaigning as Mac Collins’ heir, he mostly avoids mentioning his father, an establishment Republican whose politics were different from the party’s current MAGA leanings.

Ossoff doesn’t talk much publicly about his father, an attorney who later founded a company providing professional development services. It is widely reported the elder Ossoff funded the senator’s early career as a documentary filmmaker, leading Collins to often say in his stump speech that his opponent never held a “real job.”

Ossoff worked for U.S. Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson before launching his first campaign for Congress, an unsuccessful one, in 2017.

In both candidates’ telling, their opponent’s privileged upbringing puts them out of touch with voters and skewed their perspective on what voters truly need.

Ossoff said it shows in Collins’ support for “One, Big Beautiful Bill,” which contained tax cuts mostly benefiting the wealthy and reductions in healthcare spending that affected the poor.

In an initial statement about Collins’ runoff victory, Ossoff called him a “notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist,” references to Collins’ controversial social media posts and statements questioning the outcome of the 2020 election.

Ossoff’s statement also brought up an ethics inquiry into whether Collins’ office misused taxpayer dollars. Collins said the ethics probe is overblown, and he fired a top aide who was at the center of the investigation and one of the higher-profile social media controversies. Collins has also defended his rhetoric, saying he reflects the views of conservative voters who back Trump but that he also has proved he can work across the aisle to get legislation passed.

Collins’ ad says Ossoff’s upper-class upbringing has poisoned his politics. Ossoff, while rubbing elbows and raising money from the coastal elites, according to Collins, has opposed legislation prohibiting transgender athletes in sports or requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“Liberal John Ossoff: He’s weak, he’s woke, he’s the worst of Washington,” the Collins ad says.

Although these ads have set an initial harsh tone in how the candidates speak about each other, both are also working hard to define themselves.

Ossoff as a senator who has worked to earn another term while echoing his base’s criticisms of the Trump administration. Collins as a hard-working lawmaker who knows all too well how small businesses can be stifled by government bureaucracy.

The question for both is: Who will voters listen to?